Treasured Days

Recently, i have become really interested in making treasuries on Etsy.com.  It is good fun and also helps to get yourself into other people's treasuries which in turn means more publicity for your own shop.  Winner.  Today i was offered free shipping from someone's shop as a thank you.  Nice.

Today i have been featured in this treasury by WeeBindery:

http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4c754d9eb0436d91496e9844/orange-and-raspberry-sherbert
which features my Maisie the Christmas Fairy.

Treasuries i have made today (so far.  There may be more.  I never can tell.):

http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4c754284344a8eef137deaf4/rude?index=1
http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4c7555f4344a8eefa27feff4/meet-the-limes?index=0

Here's hoping for a sale.

The mega-mental cross stitch pattern begins...

So i bought a cross stitch from Etsy.com.  Bargain.  Well not really.  True, it cost me equivalent to £3.  For the design.  And half a cartridge of ink.  I was sent four PDF's which amounted to 25 pages of design and a legend page.  I have included photos of all these.  A bit of research tells me that the18 count Aida fabric for the project will measure roughly a metre by a metre (mahoosive!) and that something of this calibre will cost me about £17.  The legend shows a total of 85 separate colours are needed.  At 75p a skein, that is £63.75 (Manic laugh inserted here.)  Oh, but there is more. There is a (2) next to each colour.  I'm not sure but i would say then that it will require two skeins of each colour.  That's £127.50 +£17 +£3=  RIP OFF (£147.50).  Doh.

I'm off to C & H fabrics to get the Aida fabric and 12 skeins of thread tomorrow.  I will pop a picture up of the equiptment tomorrow and i will begin the project thereafter.
x

The only 'tshirt' lyrics i can recall are Shontelle's, and they can stay there....

I am now thoroughly addicted to tshirts from this online place.  My top 5 today are as follows:

1.  http://www.threadless.com/product/2233/God_Save_the_Villain/from,th+facebook
2. http://www.threadless.com/product/2248/Diver_No_12
3.http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=44044990
4. http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=44058696
5. http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=44097493

Tasty.

Such Beautiful Dignity In Self Abuse

The scales lied to me this morning in a very convincing manner.  I stood on them.  I got off them.  I stood on them.  I giggled and got back off them.  I picked it up and checked it was correctly set, then put it down again. When i stood on it again, it flashed the most beautiful 11.11 at me that i sighed and got back off.  I am unsure of how this can be.  Last week it snarled 12.3 at me and nearly bit my feet off in my escape.  This week i have been mostly eating sugar, a dirty burger at midnight, fizzy drinks and chocolate and have done half the amount of excercise i usually do due to driving lessons taking up the time i can excercise. (odd:  the draft of this blog saved at 11.11.)  I can only surmise then, that it must be down to the sheer amount of sweat being lost during my driving lessons.  I am happy for the rest of the day.

Thunderbolts and lightning, very very frightning indeed! (well, not for me.)

Every week i get to go home an hour earlier than usual on a set day.  This is known as my 'early day'.  Every three months or so, i get to add an additional hour to this time for the deep joy of getting a blood test done.  I dislike getting my blood tested, not because it is scary, cos its not.  It's just extremely tedious and i always think of other things i could be doing with that time.  So today being that day, i rocked up to the hospital, was seen by a very nice, but very small Russian (They are always foreign.  I've had Polish, Malaysian, Scottish...) nurse who was a bit rough with the tourniquet, plastered a pad to my arm and then i was on my way again.  Upon leaving the hospital, i noticed the sky was a funny shade of grey/black.  Having not budgeted for a bus home, i took to my heels in a hasty fashion.  I just made it to the bus stop near One Stop when all hell broke loose.  The rain was flowing horizontally, mad-sized hail stone started pumelling the passing cars, the wind was crazy,  screaming half-drowned school kids nestled into the stop next to me and a thunderstorm raged overhead.  The quality of light was quite peculiar.  I took my headphones out of my ears to listen to the storm and smoked my roly in a contented fashion.

You Can't Borrow Tomorrow...bom...bom...bom.........bom.

Panic over, for i have returned.  I met a pub dog called Gary today.  Anyway...

I am angry that the BBC have decided they are going to shut 6Music down at the end of next year.  I can remember the feeling of elation upon discovering the station.  The realisation that i no longer had to make an effort to listen to the dreadful Ndubs/Tinchy/Little Wayne blood-curdling racket being emitted from Radio 1 and also the realisation that i could now edge back away from the end of the plank i had been pushed along, kicking and screaming towards Radio 2 was a fine one.  I could now listen to Camper Van Beethoven, Pulp, Radiohead, Motley Crue or even some random drumming from somewhere in Africa whilst i ate my porridge in the mornings.  By there being this alternative station, i was finally able to admit that i had grown out of Radio 1 which i found very hard to do.  It felt like i was freely admitting the end of my childhood, which granted, at the age of 28,  came quite late.  But i still feel like i have always done and don't feel it is fair to be age-pigeonholed.

A colleague of mine who is turning 20 next week asked how old i was.  He didn't believe me and had to ask my mum to confirm the 'Terrible' truth.  From the minute he knew my age, i've been made to feel like i'm not 'One of them', which frankly is fine but still feels unfair.  Later that week i was discussing sandwiches with another colleague in the staff canteen.  I mentioned that my favourite homemade sandwich involves peanut butter, salad cream and crushed up salt and vinegar crisps.  A shriek came from the back of the room:  "You're too old to do that" from the first colleague.  I might get him on ageism.

I'm getting back into music again.  My MP3 is holding 179 songs that were originally on white box before it broke.  I have been playing them since about November, so i am a bit bored, but i don't want to take them off incase i lose them or mistransfer them oh, and i also still don't have a laptop to stick them on, which is a good point.  I must chase that up.  To supplement my new quest to find fine tunes, i have discovered Chase magazine which is a perfect mix of many different genres in a mag.  So far i like Tunng (folktronica) , Grasscut (glitchtronica) and The Ruby Suns (Indie-pop).  Lou told me about Beach House (indie/dream-pop) and Lawrence Arabia (Indie-pop).  I found The Big Pink (electro-rock), The Strange Boys (rock) and Racehorses (psychedelic pop) on 6Music.  I can't get enough of The Big Pink at the moment and have just discovered that they have covered a lot of Pink Floyd songs, although that is not where they got their name from.  That came from an album by The Band.

My new favourite website is www.cybercandy.com.  It is marvellous, and the only place i can source Mountain Dew in this country.  This annoys dan as he says its full of shit.  They are my teeth to rot.  They sell Moomin lollies, sour chilli sweets from Mexico, salty liqourice from Sweden and a plethora of everything that is wrong, but tasty from USA, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.  Nom nom nom.

I passed my driving theory test.  My lessons start this coming Wednesday at 5PM.  Do not be on the roads of Winchester after that time until half 6.  You have been warned.

NATHAN'S BACK!  Hi Nathan.  Welcome back.

I'm done.

Take the skinheads bowling, take them bowling.

Has it really been so long since my last post?!  I have spend most of this last month being ill part time.  I get a sore throat, headache and always one blocked nostril, then it plays out over the course of a week in a different way each time.  Just as i notice its getting better, two days later the sore throat comes back.  Odd.  So i'm just starting my fourth cold in two months it seems.  I wonder if it has anything to do with taking up swimming on a daily basis for that very same amount of time. Hmm.

My memory is shot and i can't remember half of what has happened in the last month, so i'll start now and work backwards.  I am listening to Camper Van Beethoven after hearing Take The Skin Heads Bowling on 6Music this morning over my Porridge.  I'd never heard the original before so it was a bit of an eyeopener.  I can't decided whether their version or the Manics version is better cos they differ quite a bit.  There is more fire and vigor in the Manics version but i quite like the slower laid back version of the original.  I shall Wiki them in a mo to see who they are.

I just got back from the cinema where i saw 2012.  I shan't put spoilers here but i say it was worth it.  Epic destruction via a morbid amount of CGI on a scale that i have never seen before on film.  Don't listen to James King's 1 star out of 5.  Plotline is not great and the fact that it is two and a half hours long meant i started to get bored in the last half hour, but the film was well proportioned with no rush at the end.  There is love, chaos, land problems, heartbreaking moments, more good people die than the bad ones and at least two people get their comeupance.  Ok.  ONE SPOILER (sort of)  Woody Harrelson is a ledgend.  I salute the man for his supurb acting and the suprise of not knowing he was in it.  I shall IMDB to find the errors.  There must be thousands.  So go and see it :)

The Bear left for his first foray into Cornwall this afternoon.  He's gone to see the Rose nursery down there and meet the folk who run it, who he will hopefully be the boss of come June time.  He'll be working in the field too, lifting roses all day.  It's the first time in 6 years that we have been apart.  We see each other every day.  I went to the cinema so i would mope about the house.  It's only for 3 days though, so not too bad.  Still miss him though.  Spicy cat is offering me her warmth and purrs which is lovely.  It is still a nice novelty to have her sleep in the bedroom with me.  I look forward to seeing Bear again on Wednesday.

I've had quite a few bag sales and unfortunately what looks like a non sale by someone from Russia cos they can't read the payment terms.  Dumbass.  I have sent five bags to a shop in Philidelphia which scouted me out on Etsy.com for my recycled shopping bags.  That was exciting.  I've now got to send her a small profile of myself and what i try to do and some pics so she can put them on the website too.  She only wants a 30% cut too.  I've just had a week of and i've really gone to town helping morsbags.com.  They are an online non-profit organisation that calls on the sewing skills of women to give their free time to make fabric shopping bags to give away in towns and cities guerilla style.  We intend to encourage people to stop using plastic bags which are slowly throttling our animals and environment.  I am in the Winchester City Baggers pod on Morsbags.com and am currently recruiting.  I am taking fabric and supplies donations and monetary donations to pay for the labels to go on the bags.  The people who make the bags do it all for free.  I've made 12 bags so far and i've still got two days left of my holiday to go.

I GOT TICKETS TO SEE CHARLOTTE HATHERLEY AT THE RAILWAY INN!
I want to get Muse tickets for the Wembley gig next September when they go on sale next Friday, but i quake at what the cost will be.

I can't remember anything else.  Oh, i choked on the fizzy shit on a Tangfastic. In the cinema.  At a really quiet part of the film.  Goon.